Salter 1962: Difference between revisions
(Created page with 'Salter, Elizabeth. ''Piers Plowman: An Introduction.'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. ''Piers Plowman'' has been read as a sermon, or as medieval religious allegory …') |
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''Piers Plowman'' has been read as a sermon, or as medieval religious allegory | ''Piers Plowman'' has been read as a sermon, or as medieval religious allegory | ||
we need to be more sensitive to it as ''art'', the product of a creative imagination | we need to be more sensitive to it as ''art'', the '''product of a creative imagination''' | ||
poem's art is "part of a larger web of allegorical significances, which Langland can only help us to understand if we will accept the initial premise -- a potential though fluctuating richness of connected meanings" (9) | poem's art is "part of a larger web of allegorical significances, which Langland can only help us to understand if we will accept the initial premise -- a potential though fluctuating richness of connected meanings" (9) | ||
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popular in its own tiem; over 50 manuscripts from c14-15, and printed four times before 1561 (12) | popular in its own tiem; over 50 manuscripts from c14-15, and printed four times before 1561 (12) | ||
by early c16, was pilloried for social/religious satire, used (ironically) to support the Reformation | by early c16, was pilloried for social/religious satire, '''used (ironically) to support the Reformation''' | ||
'''alliterative verse''': aligns Langland with medieval poets from west and north of England who inherited alliterative tradition from pre-Conquest times, used it in preference to French metres (13); display or rhetorical flourishes, not concealment (17) | '''alliterative verse''': aligns Langland with medieval poets from west and north of England who inherited alliterative tradition from pre-Conquest times, used it in preference to French metres (13); display or rhetorical flourishes, not concealment (17) | ||
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:"No other poem of the alliterative tradition combines so distinctively rational procedure (in the verse paragraph, the individual speech or episode) with what appears, at first, to be a larger irrationality -- an almost inconsequential attitude to the problems of developing and sustaining actions and arguments." (22) | :"No other poem of the alliterative tradition combines so distinctively rational procedure (in the verse paragraph, the individual speech or episode) with what appears, at first, to be a larger irrationality -- an almost inconsequential attitude to the problems of developing and sustaining actions and arguments." (22) | ||
manuals on preaching and writing sermons common in late medieval period; focus on balance between beauty and usefulness (Ciceronian triple aim of rhetoric -- docere, movere, delectare) | |||
* Langland drawing on this tradition | |||
Revision as of 17:35, 16 September 2010
Salter, Elizabeth. Piers Plowman: An Introduction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.
Piers Plowman has been read as a sermon, or as medieval religious allegory
we need to be more sensitive to it as art, the product of a creative imagination
poem's art is "part of a larger web of allegorical significances, which Langland can only help us to understand if we will accept the initial premise -- a potential though fluctuating richness of connected meanings" (9)
popular in its own tiem; over 50 manuscripts from c14-15, and printed four times before 1561 (12)
by early c16, was pilloried for social/religious satire, used (ironically) to support the Reformation
alliterative verse: aligns Langland with medieval poets from west and north of England who inherited alliterative tradition from pre-Conquest times, used it in preference to French metres (13); display or rhetorical flourishes, not concealment (17)
- Langland does not give "alliteration the dominance it so often has in other contemporary works" (22)
- "No other poem of the alliterative tradition combines so distinctively rational procedure (in the verse paragraph, the individual speech or episode) with what appears, at first, to be a larger irrationality -- an almost inconsequential attitude to the problems of developing and sustaining actions and arguments." (22)
manuals on preaching and writing sermons common in late medieval period; focus on balance between beauty and usefulness (Ciceronian triple aim of rhetoric -- docere, movere, delectare)
- Langland drawing on this tradition